Dan leads Ward and Smith’s White Collar Defense and Government Investigations Practice Group. He represents companies, boards, and individuals in investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and other enforcement and regulatory authorities, conducts internal investigations of significant allegations of wrongdoing, and advises clients on building compliance infrastructure. He has represented companies of varying sizes, audit committees, and executives in government-facing and internal investigations involving the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), accounting and financial fraud, insider trading, and the False Claims Act, among other areas. He has conducted investigations in the United States and cross-border investigations for clients with overseas operations.

Dan has more than 16 years of experience handling complex investigations, enforcement matters, and civil litigation. He spent nearly a decade at a large, global law firm, first as a litigator in New York City and then in its white collar defense practice in Washington, D.C., where he conducted high-stakes investigations of alleged fraud, corruption, insider trading, and other financial crimes, including matters before the DOJ and the SEC. He then spent seven years as in-house counsel at a large professional services firm, where he personally led hundreds of internal investigations and designed, built, and managed key components of the organization’s internal compliance infrastructure.

The combination of law firm and in-house experience shapes how Dan advises clients. He defends companies and individuals when they receive a subpoena or other outreach from a regulator or enforcement authority. But he also understands that companies are best positioned for a favorable outcome when they learn about serious allegations internally, before the government is involved. His experience as in-house counsel helps him advise clients on calibrated responses to all types of internal reports, including threshold questions like whether to investigate and whether to involve outside counsel. When significant allegations do surface, he works with clients to conduct thorough, efficient, and defensible investigations, stop the misconduct early, remediate appropriately, and make informed decisions about self-disclosure to, and cooperation with, the government.

Dan also believes enforcement readiness begins before a crisis arises. Effective compliance and reporting mechanisms, scaled appropriately for a company’s size and risk profile, give employees a way to safely raise concerns internally (and anonymously, if they wish), allowing companies to identify, investigate, and address misconduct early. As in-house counsel, he created company-wide protocols governing the intake and investigation of whistleblower complaints, managed the initial review and triage of incoming reports, oversaw various monitoring processes, and helped create training programs for employees on key risk areas. He helps clients build those mechanisms, investigate serious allegations of misconduct, and defend themselves when the government becomes involved.